1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to user authentication in a monitoring system that monitors electronic equipment by communicating with the electronic equipment.
2. Related Art
For the purpose of providing various kinds of service to authorized users of electronic equipment and preventing fraudulent access by any person who is not an authorized user of electronic equipment, user authentication procedure is introduced in some monitoring systems that monitor the running status of electronic equipment via a communication channel. For example, the following technique is disclosed in JP-A-2004-259191. Information that is necessary for user registration is transmitted from electronic equipment such as a laser printer to a mobile phone held by a person in charge of user registration for the electronic equipment. On the basis of the information, an electronic mail is transmitted from the mobile phone to a management server. User registration is performed in this way.
In the related art described above, after the establishment of communication link between the electronic equipment and the mobile phone, it is possible to perform user registration just by operating the mobile phone. For this reason, there is a risk of erroneous association of the user with the electronic equipment. For example, there is a possibility that the electronic equipment regarding which the user wants to be registered might not be the same as the communication-established one. Moreover, for example, when registration work is performed for plural pieces of electronic equipment at the same time, there is a possibility of confusion in correspondences between registration-requesting users and the pieces of electronic equipment, resulting in erroneous registration.